The question is, do you believe God is speaking completely ironically or not?

The biblical God's biggest pet peeve is idolatry, which is the manufacturing of 'truth' by human beings.

Implying or stating dissatisfaction with anyone who fails to live up to his own performance would be the exact opposite of his usual message, which is something along the lines of: "noone can possibly live up to my performance, nor should you (commit evil) try to."

OK, not to start a huge debate, but one of the most mentioned topics in the bible is money. It is said that one cannot serve both god and money, thus diefying money. From this passage many christians take a small theological step and consider anything that conflicts with worshipping god to be idolatry. Putting anything beforte god says that we think we know how to fulfill our needs better than god does, which is where Zeku is getting "manufacture of truth"_________________Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. -- Frederick Douglass

i thought the whole idolotry thing went back to the second commandment - ""You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand {generations} of those who love me and keep my commandments." (or, as the king james' puts it: "Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me")

so, what with the third and fourth generation thing, i would be wary of worshipping about anything, whether i graved it myself, or not.

now that i think of it, you have to engrave plates to print currency (or molds to mint coins) - so money of all forms could definitely be classed as graven images._________________aka: neverscared!

Joined: 09 Jul 2006Posts: 9702Location: I have to be somewhere? ::runs around frantically::

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 7:13 pm Post subject:

MellowFish wrote:

OK, not to start a huge debate, but one of the most mentioned topics in the bible is money. It is said that one cannot serve both god and money, thus diefying money. From this passage many christians take a small theological step and consider anything that conflicts with worshipping god to be idolatry. Putting anything beforte god says that we think we know how to fulfill our needs better than god does, which is where Zeku is getting "manufacture of truth"

No no, it is the love of money. "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." 1 Timothy 6:10. Followed by what mouse said, your post makes no sense.

Though a graven image only gets its power from being worshiped. Even if Jews thought every statue of a person was a mockery of God (which isn't true), the engraving of money plates is used to make money which is a symbol for bartering. It is the love of money that makes a person bad, not the money itself._________________Before God created Las he pondered on all the aspects a woman might have, he considered which ones would look good super-inflated and which ones to leave alone.
After much deliberation he gave her a giant comfort zone. - Michael

No no, it is the love of money. "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil." 1 Timothy 6:10. Followed by what mouse said, your post makes no sense.

Though a graven image only gets its power from being worshiped. Even if Jews thought every statue of a person was a mockery of God (which isn't true), the engraving of money plates is used to make money which is a symbol for bartering. It is the love of money that makes a person bad, not the money itself.

Doest thou dare to attack my usage of holy writ?

The Bible (NIV) wrote:

Mat 6:24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.

My point was valid, mostly becuase I never said that making graven images was wrong. I said that serving what they represent (or the images themselves) is wrong. Thus putting money before god constitutes an act of idolatry becuase if you aren't serving god you are serving something else.

EDIT: Thanks for using scripture to attck my argument. I appreciate you not simply rejecting it out of hand._________________Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. -- Frederick Douglass

I'd contest that using scripture to refute scripture is proof positive that the Bible is a poorly stitched together pastiche of bronze age tribalism and iron age population control. That the Bible as a source of morals and values require a pre-existing set of morals and values to distinguish the good parts (golden rule, not killing others, etc.) with the bad parts (rape, genocide, place of women, treatment of other cultures, use of an unsubstantiated afterlife to guilt you into said confilcting moral structure).

You have some gorgeous ancient writing in the Bible, but it is long past time to put it in the same category as the illad, the odyssey, the norse cycles, and every other mythology we got.

Other cultures were destroyed by the Hebrews (in the Bible) when they were (according to the Bible) in conflict with the God in the same book, and that same destruction was ordered by that same God.

You may disagree with the morality itself, but you won't find logical inconsistencies in relation to it. This is especially true since the book affirms that whatever God says is automatically right.

Edit: By the way, the question of God vs Money becomes especially exciting when you realize that money itself is nothing more than faith. Neither money, nor the gold is supposedly represents has any value unless everyone agrees that it does. A dollar is nothing more than the faith that it can be turned into a cheeseburger. Because nearly everyone on earth shares this faith, it works.

So, if you value faith (or truth) above the one who creates that faith, it's idolatry.

I love this subject, because when I was young I always wondered how 'the love of money' could be the root of something like rape. But when you realize that it's 'loving the ability to make people believe you, and do whatever you say,' it makes a lot more sense.

Last edited by Zeku on Wed Nov 08, 2006 7:57 am; edited 1 time in total